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Music Media

SDMI: The Music Industry Strikes Back 122

Posted by Hemos from the here-we-again-on-our-own dept.
phred writes "The music industry is fighting back by finalizing its Secure Digital Music Initiative says this story. The spec is due to be ratified at a meeting on July 7. In the first phase MP3 and other formats would be playable on devices following the SDMI spec. In phase two, a "pirate screening" process will prevent copying a clone of a protected recording, a la the not-lamented SCMS format for CD and DAT. " The RIAA claims that they are trying to protect artists' copyrights, while others, such as the EFF, are stating that the RIAA is merely trying to keep a stranglehold on distribution channels, and hence, their own bucks.
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SDMI: The Music Industry Strikes Back More

SDMI: The Music Industry Strikes Back

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  • Fight ASX - don't worry about SDMI (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    ASX is the true evil, especially for Slashdot users. SDMI isn't even close to being a product.

    The RIAA doesn't have the power to push a standard
    through; however, Microsoft does. Microsoft's
    "standard" means that in a short period of time
    Windows will be used on all servers, and they
    will certainly discontinue the Linux player (or
    at least leave it a couple of versions behind).

    At least mp3 is open.

    ASX should be boycotted ASAP.

  • Re: (Digital == better)? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Your decomposition of the "Perfect Sound Forever" campaign is accurate and I agree with most of it, but it is not universally accepted that because something is digital it is better. The distortions possible on an analog recording just aren't possible with digital equipment (unless it is simulated... i.e. extensively programmed or what not to reproduce sounds that can easily be created via analog means). The characteristic overdriven sound that is so familiar to most listeners of rock music has much to do with sending an analog recording device too much signal that it can handle. (see Velvet Underground's _White Light, White Heat_ album for a good example) With digital, when the threshold is reached, it cuts out. So really the first two D's in DDD are really irrelevant. A musician cares more about the sound that comes out of the speakers than how it was put onto the disc.
  • Most artists don't make money from the sale of recorded music. Period. Most money is made in ticket sales and merchandise. One of the most commercially successful bands in history, the Grateful Dead, pioneered the concept of allowing mass free distribution of their music (not the studio records - only live performances) that allowed for a huge community to grow around the band, thus leading to 25 years of sold out shows and massive merchandise revenue. While allowing "tape trading" their management was brutal about trademarks and merchandise.

    I have numerous friends in the music industry - both at management level and performers - all of whom are hip to the idea of free online distribution of some of their recordings. If that brings more people out to their shows to buy tickets and t-shirts then they're thrilled.

    There's an article about mp3 over at Rolling Stone entitled World War MP3 [rollingstone.com] - a worthy read to get industry perspectives on this subject.

    Cheakamus

  • Posted by hyperman:

    I fear that in the hubbub about all this lossy compression and digital distribution, quality recording will fall by the wayside. CDs are already provide audio quality inferior to what's possible on a good stereo. They came up with the HDCD standard to fix this. MP3, on the other hand, sounds way worse than a CD(to someone with a decent stereo who really listens to their music). I don't care so much about free music vs "artist's rights" or whatever- I just want recordings that don't sound muddy and processed with blobby imaging. That's how all the MP3s I've ever heard sound to me.
    I love my music, and I've spent thousands of dollars getting equipment to reproduce it as flawlessly as possible. However, if all I can get is MP3, I may as well have bought some AIWA minisystem and saved myself the price of a new car.

  • I fail to see the point, all of these schemes get cracked in no time. SCMS, Macrovision, PSX and Saturn country code lock-outs and copy protection regimes, even hardware lockouts, et. al., have all been defeated.

    It doesn't matter. You can't buy devices that do this in the consumer electronics store in the mall. So it doesn't exist. Just because a handful of high-tech wunderkinds have the ability to crack this stuff doesn't mean it will ever find its way into the hands of the general public -- which is the only time it actually matters.

    Any chimp with even a modicum of technical knowledge can circumnavigate these truly pathetic measures.

    You're on crack. This means that you and your friends, members of the technological priesthood all, will be able to pirate music. That's all well and good for you. But it does not mean that any lasting change will have been effected in the way the music industry operates. It does not mean that the artists will stop getting screwed the way they are today.

  • Keep in mind that only devices that adhere to the SDMI specs will be affected. Now, if you were a manufacturer, what incentive would you have to follow this if it only means a smaller selection of music that your customers can listen to?

    A nice theory, but DVD players are a counter-example. It's very difficult to buy a DVD player that is not region-coded. Yes, you can buy them, but only mail-order, and they cost 3x as much as normal players. They're irrelevant.

    Likewise, you don't see any commercial VCRs with built-in Macrovision suppression. You can buy devices that do it, but only from shady operators with small ads in the back pages of video magazines.

    Such things never hit the mainstream, because the content providers and hardware manufacturers and (more importantly) hardware distributors are all in bed with each other.

  • Re:One to many (Score:3)

    by Jamie Zawinski ( 775 ) <jwz@jwz.org> on Tuesday June 29, 1999 @11:21AM (#1826987) Homepage
    Did you know that of the $15 or $16 you spend on a CD in most CD stores, about $1 of that actually goes to the artist?

    It is so much worse than you imagine. Read this: http://www.apk.net/cihs/verbal/albini.html [apk.net]

    The summary from that article:

    • This is how much each player got paid at the end of the game.

    • Record company: $710,000
      Producer: $90,000
      Manager: $51,000
      Studio: $52,000
      Previous label: $50,000
      Agent: $7,5000
      Lawyer: $12,000
      Band member net income each: $4,031.25

      The band is not 1/4 of the way through its contract, has made the music industry more than 3 million dollars richer, but is in the hole $14,000 on royalties. The band members have each earned about 1/3 as much as they would working at a 7-11, but they got to ride in a tour bus for a month.

    Burn, Hollywood, Burn.

  • The RIAA is running scared and I, for one, have no sympathy for them. MP3 snuck up on them, and now they are scrambling to try to do damage control.

    They claim to protect artists rights, but they are really about monopolizing distribution. They aren't so much scared about piracy as they are about a band being able to distribute their music without coughing up the majority of the profits to the industry.

    --
  • The only way to prevent copying of music is to have encryption all the way from the audio file into the sound card. If there is any point in the line where there is an enencrypted 44.1 16-bit data stream it is inevitable that illegal copies will appear. Unlike code, which can protect itself somewhat (that is, it can take up to a few days to crack the copy protection), non-executable music formats will be trivially easy to break if you have access at the device driver level.

  • The important difference is, anybody can get a web site. The new bands WILL need a portal to funnel in traffic and hopefully, get attantion, but once a group becomes big, they can just set up a site. At $200/month for a colo, a popular group couldn't go wrong.

    Once that happens, they will tend to 'sponsor' new and less known groups that they like (just as the larger groups do now).

    The barrier to entry for a web site (even considering traffic generation) is lower than it is for a record label.

  • Just use an inductive pickup. They're not too likely to build in tempest technology.

  • True. I suppose the amount of hum would depend on the geometry of the speaker setup. It may or may not be possable to overcome. Perhaps try the pickup, and if it doesn't work, mount up the cutting wheel.

  • Just how stupid does the RIAA think we are? The artists' copyrights please, I would be hard pressed to name a single artist who owns a copyright. The artists, like programers, are working under IP agreements that guarantee the label (read RIAA) the rights to their work. The only cares the RIAA has for artists' copyrights is securing them under their terms so they get most of the cash instead of the artists.
  • I'm pretty sure that R.E.M. owns the copyright to all their songs. Unfortunately, I don't have the entire catalog with me, but on the latest album, they have "Warner Bros. Records Inc., a Time Warner Company. (C)(P) 1998 R.E.M./Athens, L.L.C. " No copyright by the record company, copyright is by the author. I'm pretty sure the rest of the albums are the same way.

    However, this is the only example I can come up with.
  • anyone pronouncing this SDMI format as "sodomy" yet. I'm telling you, it will be the next cute net joke. Why, its almost as easy as "wince".

    I've never been much for the disparaging name thing (though I do say "wince"). But, I really think this one is inevitable. So, we go from "scuzzy" to "sodomy". Why not?

    Wow, I may have dubbed a pronounciation.
    --Lenny
  • A band can release mp3's as bait and then offer higher-quality recordings on the format of their choice.

    CD
    Vinyl
    8-track
    Edison Wax Cylinder
    Whatever

  • Actually.... (Score:3)

    by otis wildflower ( 4889 ) on Tuesday June 29, 1999 @06:52AM (#1826997) Homepage
    .... Artists get about US$0.57 per album, PLUS:
    • they pay for the production costs of their videos or other promotional materials
    • they have to pay back any advances out of their royalties before they see any
    • they pay the charges for lawyers, agents, personal security, etc.
    • they lose the rights to their recordings
    • the distribution of their work is at the whim of the record company
    • they are forced contractually, on many occasions, to 'sell out' and produce work which even they acknowledge is inferior


    The internet as a liberator as well as a distribution model is an earth-shattering revelation, if artists can only be brave enough and sure enough in themselves to see it and appreciate it. On the internet:
    • you can keep more $$ per album sold
    • you can keep the rights to your performances
    • you can thus charge less to your fans
    • you can release anything you create


    The whole reason to get a record contract is to get on the radio and build an audience large enough to support tours, merchandise, advertising, etc. That's where an artist earns their $$$. What needs to happen is radio stations (starting with college radio) need to get on the net and use music from the net over regular radios (radio signals are still far more efficient and accessible than realaudio or icecast). Here's why a radio station should consider rebroadcasting net music:
    • no need to hassle with license fees for the most part
    • being first with a new sound or band is important to the image of the station
    • reduced ASCAP/BMI costs mean more potential profit from advertising

    (though radio stations would probably miss out on some payola, but then again, you'd have a war of dueling net.audio sites who'll sponsor syndicated shows.. 'the MP3.com biscuit flower hour' anyone?)

    Screw the recording industry. Let's toast marshmallows on its burning remains.
  • simply linking /dev/audio to a file won't work. /dev/audio is an 8-bit interface, so you really want to use /dev/dsp. /dev/dsp does stuff like let you query it's sampling rate, etc. and can not be reproduced by a simple file.

    However, apps like vsound and possibly esd will allow you to copy all data sent to /dev/dsp to a file. This is essentially what you're talking about.

    So, there isn't really a good, technical, way of enforcing copyrights when you can play the file on a Linux box (and I imagine there can be similar hacks for Windows). The only solution that I can see is what you suggested, use the government.

  • Of Artist Rights and Such (Score:4)

    by bear1 ( 5658 ) on Tuesday June 29, 1999 @07:24AM (#1826999) Homepage
    Comming from an Audio Engineer's point of view, and being given an overview of Copyright Law by one of the best legal minds in the enterntainment industry, I think we need to evaluate what the artist's interests are. We all know that the record label's interests are to make money. Consequently, they are the ones that are initiating SMDI specification. The artists still don't see half of all the money that the record company generates on the sales of the albums.

    The current process for a signed artist for creating a record and making money follows. The record company gives the artist a loan (for a secular artist starting out, it can be upwards of $500,000) to create this album in the studio. The record label usually assigns a producer--but artists with more clout can choose their own. The producer collects an up front fee for his services, and a percentage on the net sales of the songs he works on. The artist spends the next few months in a studio coming up with new songs. While the artist collects performance royalties on all the songs they record, that money is used to pay the record company back for there overly generous loan. They probably won't see any money from that set of royalties for two years. If the artist actually writes the song, then they will actually receive royalties on that right away. The real money the artist sees is from touring. That is where any artist worth their weight will cash in.

    If the artist wants to see more money in their pockets, they can become their own record label. The artist formally known as Prince is a big advocate of this. The problem is getting the distribution channels open. If you already have a name established, then you should have comparably fewer trials in this area.

    Royalties are payed each time the song is played on the radio, performed live, or sold in a CD. The standard royalties are ~6.9 cents per five minute song. If a song is over five minutes, it will receive an additional 1.5 cents per minute (rounded up to the full minute, so one second over five minutes is considered a 6 minute song). The actual numbers I gave you are a few years old, but they are in the ball park. That makes roughly 70 cents per CD (or $1.40 if they also wrote every song on the CD). When you have sheer numbers, the royalties can really add up.

    I am a firm believer in keeping the royalty scheme intact. I don't believe that the record companies have anybodies interests but their own in tact. The royalty scheme was created along with the original Copyright Act to protect artists from being exploited by the record companies--much like unions were created to protect the worker from the abuses of large manufacturing companies. That is why all record company contracts (to my knowlege) are decidedly written in their favor. Only a fool would never negotiate over even one point on the contract.

    The royalty payment scheme is enforced by one of three bodies (if the artist registers with them): ASCAP, BMI, or SESAC. There may also be a couple other smaller companies to perform this function. Basically, if ANY venue plays songs protected by their repetoir, the venue must pay a standard fee. Clubs, radio stations, and stores have a set yearly fee they have to pay (along with web sites that play songs in their repetoir--which includes an independant band's cover of a song they protect). Juke boxes and such have a per use fee. (here is a little known fact that I learned: any magnetic digital media has a small digital 'tax' that goes into the music industry--every disk, dat, or backup tape--regardless of what it is actually used for) (that was introduced when the record industry was afraid of consumer DAT tapes and drives).

    It all comes down to a big racket. The artist and the consumer are the two big losers. So how do we fix the problem and keep artists and consumers happy? I don't know. Releasing a single on MP3 to generate interest in buying a CD is an excellent idea. It gives the consumer a taste of what the artist can do. The gain in good will offsets the loss in revenues, and consequently the artist will get a larger following. The Greatful Dead are testimony to that with their liberality in letting the consumers tape their shows.

    While the artist is in control of the copyright (this also applies to software), they can use it as real property (like real estate). They can buy, sell, and bequeath it. American copyrights (after 1970) are good for 50 years after the death of the author. If they so choose, they can grant the general public the LISCENSE to freely copy and distribute any song they choose. That distribution does not include performance rights which would be a separate liscence. That way the artist holds on to the copyright so they can collect from radio stations and CDs, but still allow the net to distribute that song freely without fear of litigation. If the artist so chooses, they could even donate the song to the public domain, thereby releasing their right to the copyright.

    Remember that once a song, software, or any creative work is written--it is copyrighted (In American copyright law--I can't say for international copyright law). The only thing registering it at the Library of Congress does is provide definitive proof that you came up with that creative work first. They don't perform any checking whatsoever. If someone tries to sue you for violating their copyright, that registry is the proof of the date that you created it. Sometimes you came up with it first, sometimes you didn't. Either way, if they didn't register it, then the case is thrown out because they have no proof.
  • that's true. In this country at least, money == freedom.

  • Okay, let me get this streight. I have 4 cd players, some costing over two costing $700. Now along comes RIAA with this digital music thingy. So now my current cd players won't play any new cds in the future right? I don't think so.

    Do I smell lawsuit here? I see it like this. Sony who makes cd players now can force me to buy new equipment by changing the format of thier future cds. Now they get to sell the same cd back to me to fit the new player format right?

    Screw that! I think if a few million pissed off cd owners threathed a class action this secured music thingy might wind up deader than divx.

  • CD-R (Score:1)

    by Orp ( 6583 )
    What's the RIAA gonna do when people start exchanging music over the ether in shortened PCCM format (ripped directly from CD, temporarily compressed in a lossless way)? Oh wait, people are already doing that! I find it interesting that MP3 is being labelled as the big bugaboo while CD-R's are down to about a buck a piece if you buy in bulk, and good ol' PCCM doesn't have the issues (lossy compression) today's MP3's have.

    I'm not advocating piracy, but the cat is long out of the bag. Unless the record companies stop releasing stuff on CD, I can't imagine how they are going to stem the tide of n-generation cloning.

    Of course, the could tax the hell out of the CD-R format a la Canada (did that ever happen?)...

  • Macrovision's "SafeDisc" system is on several new titles, including Midtown Madness and Need for Speed 4, and it'll be on even more this fall. *sigh*.

  • in general, i agree. the net has changed things, i.e. the distribution mechanism. there will still be middlemen in the music biz. portal sites will become what big record companies are today. the difference is the piece that artists will get. the middleman has become magnitudes more efficient, and there are rewards for that. remember, the record companies don't force anyone to buy their shit. CDs are $17 because people will pay that price - the market will (apparently) bear $17. MP3 is simply making people question that price. i don't think the fundamentals of the music biz will change, just the players and the margins. but who cares what i think?

  • If you read the article, you would see that the most popular portable MP3 player (Rio) WILL adopt this standard. Don't know why, but that's what the article said.

  • They'll probably put some kind of SMDI logo on it.

    Don't buy a player with the logo.

    Could be a big opportunity for some company to cash in on that by specifically marketing toward people who don't like the SMDI.

  • oops (Score:1)

    by Dast ( 10275 )
    s/SMDI/SDMI/
  • There's nothing that will prevent people from continuing to write MP3 encoders and decoders, mostly because the format is already open and available.

    If SDMI proves to be too restrictive, it will leave a bunch of companies behind with their "betamax" style technology.

    Interesting how these people don't mind "first generation copies" but want to prevent Nth generation copies. But what if the original is my own work or is in the public domain? Why should I be restricted to the same limitations?

    If SDMI doesn't address these issues properly, then they will find out that they created their little format, but nobody wants to play with them.

    Only time will tell...
    --
  • Too little, too late, and I have no sympathy for them.

    MP3 will always be here for us to fall back on even if they come up with a dozen new standards. It isn't good enough for audiophiles, but it is good enough for the vast majority of music listeners. The promise of new formats with better quality and higher compression is not enough to outweigh the loss of freedom from the copy protection schemes.

    I honestly don't understand why they even keep trying. If they had embraced this instead of fighting it they could have probably found a way to turn a profit on this whole thing. Now they are just playing catch-up to a blooming digital music industry that will move many times faster than they can hever hope to catch up with.

    As far as artists's rights - RIAA has been pirating those for years. Now they have the gall to act upset because someone else is pirating that which they 'rightfully' stole first? The ownership of the music should belong only to the artists who produce it.


    Related stuff that you might find interesting:

    Related SDMI article on MP3.Com covering the same story.
    http://www.mp3.com/news/281.html

    SDMI Revocation and technical information.
    http://www.mp3.com/news/279.html

    Final outcome of the RIAA/Diamond lawsuit.
    This one is particularly interesting since it effectively legalized all MP3 files and killed the AHRA.
    http://www.mp3.com/news/277.html

    The Free Music Philosophy (Sounds a little familiar...)
    http://www.ram.org/ramblings/philosophy/fmp.html

    Now I am just waiting for the first REAL portable CD/MP3 player... Naiam was going to make one but it has become vaporware. Anyone know of any commercial projects in this direction?
  • If SDMI proves to be too restrictive, it will leave a bunch of companies behind with their "betamax" style technology.

    I think the new term is their "DivX" style technology. Perhaps even more accurate, since DivX failed because it was what the industry wanted, not what consumers wanted...


  • I think musicians should be paid for performances, with less emphasis on CD sales. If things continue the way they are, this is what will happen.

    This would seem to be the artist's decision, not yours. Whether it's a live performance, or one recorded on a CD, they still created it, and they're still entitled to be compensated if you add it to your collection.

  • I agree...CD prices are way out of line. But what amazes me is that people keep right on buying them. Either that, or they feel like the high prices entitle them to steal the music instead.

    I'm not one of those hypocrites who preach one thing and then do something else - the last time I bought a CD was about a year ago, and before that, purchases were few and far between. I have a grand total of 1 MP3, and this is from a group who openly released on the net. I realize that I'm probably in the extreme minority, but I believe that the market CAN work...all it takes is a little discipline.
  • No, the artist doesn't decide how I experience the art. He (all-inclusive, not sexist) merely creates, you enjoy.

    Wanna bet? If I produce a song, and I decide that I'm not going to do any live performances, it's pretty much my decision, isn't it. You have no asy in the matter.

    "Entitled to be compensated"?!, for what? magnetic images!? is music so difficult to create and scarce that I must cherish each and every moment...and PAY for it?!

    Why do you listen to music? Because you enjoy it, right? And because you enjoy it, it has a certain value to you, correct? What is it about music that makes you think that you're ENTITLED to it, merely because someone has expended the time and resources necessary to create it?

    Anyone can "write" music, just like anyone can "write" poetry. Special are those, however, who can do it in such a way as to create something that has a sense of form and beauty to it, that invites an inner part of ourselves to "mingle" with it, experience it, and allow it to affect us. I find it odd that something can be so profound, yet deemed so worthless.

    would pay for music, but only great music and even then only to hear it live. Otherwise I would cover the costs of production, but most definitely NOT the price of promotion (the RIAA's excuse for $15 cds)

    And after you so generously cover the cost of production, what's the artist going to live on, their good looks?
  • Most classical recordings are straight digital (DDD) because more classical music listeners are "audiophiles" and demand it. Further, they have a choice. If you want a CD of Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky", and you can choose between two recordings, both by reputable orchestras, and one is ADD and the other DDD, which would you pick?

    I listen to a lot of classical music, esp. opera. Many of the really great performances were recorded in the 1950s and 1960s. Some recent CDs that I bought were remastered from 1950s mono recordings. They still sound pretty good today. The same applies to many classic Jazz recordings.

    What's the point of having 22 bit ADCs, digital mixing boards and all the latest toys to produce a DDD CD if the musicians and vocalists are mediocre?


  • Rather than trying to reinvent CD-Audio, I thought the plan was to move to DVD-Audio (which presumably already has the encryption stuff built in). Consumers get Dolby and the other features - music industry gets some protection, and the upgrade makes sense because you'll be able to watch movies.
    --

  • The little "DDD" labels were dropped like 10 years ago, although they were somewhat useful.

    Essentially if you saw "AAD" on a reissue it probably meant that "We took this crappy master tape that was biased for phonograph needles and slapped it on a CD. Sorry about the hiss.". The "ADD" stuff usually meant that album was remastered for CD, and hence was a better bet.
    --

  • They're planning to make life difficult (although not impossible) even for that plan. Here's the direction Sony seems to be going in:

    1) Use a universial digital interconnect like Firewire.
    2) Encrypt the data on that wire.
    3) Put the amplifiers inside of the speakers
    4) Seal up the speakers so that you have to damage them to get to the actual speaker leads.

    There's always going to be analog-out on certain systems, but I could see walking into a Good Guys in a few years and seing consumer rack systems that have no user-accessible analog or non-encrypted digital outputs.
    --
  • SDMI also means "Plays MP3!" absolutelly.
  • It's good! SDMI is bad!
    Even the purists secretly think it's good!
    Satanic Demonic Music Initiave is worse. But at least it WILL play MP3 also.
    But remember: Sodomy is not bad, SDMI may infest...but MP3 is IT!

    "It's over: It's MP3!"
    JoeT
  • Did you know that of the $15 or $16 you spend on a CD in most CD stores, about $1 of that actually goes to the artist? I have no problem paying for music (free speech not beer), especially if I'm paying the artist and not financing some VP's new yacht. And you've just hit on the reason SDMI will fail. If the artist sells direct at $5/copy and gets to keep $4 of it (the rest goes to paying for a server and such), then even if 75% of the copies out there are pirated they're still making as much as they would have off the label where they were getting $1/copy. That's not counting the people who would pirate at $15/CD but will pay $5 for a legit copy. The RIAA's whole argument is predicated on the idea that the number of pirated copies is more important than the dollars in the artist's pocket. From the artist's POV I don't think that's the case, and if it isn't then SDMI through the RIAA is not in the artist's best interests.

  • Why?

    There's nothing currently protecting the artist's rights when the medium is vinyl records, or cassette tapes, or CDs. There's nothing to prevent me from taking any printed book and copying it. Broadcast television can readily be taped and the tape duplicated. It doesn't look to me like artists of any stripe have much protection.

    Oh, I forgot. There's this pesky thing called "copyright law". If I do any of the above sorts of copying, the artist can haul me into court and collect damages. So precisely why won't this same thing work for MP3s and the like, when it works for everything else?

    And yes, I know copying MP3s is easier. It's a lot easier to scan and reproduce a book than it was 20 years ago, too. That hasn't led to technical restrictions on photocopiers, has it?

  • I think I figured out what the RIAA is really trying to do with the SDMI standard. They are not depending on the technical merits of SDMI (because there are none), but rather they are depending on future legal merits. My theory is that they will use this standard as a basis for litigation in the future.

    If a company manufactures a device that will play pirated music, but the RIAA offers a system that will prevent this, then it is easier to argue that they are contributing to piracy problems through the creation of such devices. Whether this would stand up in court is debatable, but I suspect that's what their plan is.

    ---

  • I don't know about that. While I enjoy laughing at them as much as the rest of you for their foolishness, they can't be so completely naive and out-of-it that they haven't thought of this (can they?).

    I'm betting that they make the SDMI specs absolutely free--perhaps even pay manufacturers to offset the cost of retooling factories--and then let the hammer drop. RIAA catches someone playing pirated music (worry about how later, someone's stupid enough to get caught), finds out what player they're using, and sues the manufacturer as an accomplice. Sounds ridiculous? But the manager was told--amidst a massive publicity campaign--that by adopting this new technology, he/she/it was helping to stop piracy.

    It might not stand up (most probably would not stand up) in court in this precise form, but a small manufacturer trying to offer specifically non-SDMI merchandise could be swamped in court costs. Any larger manufacturer, like Sony, is probably already in bed with RIAA (for example, Sony has a record label), and will adopt the SDMI standards without a second thought.

    If I can come up with this half-assed plan, a team of power lawyers can certainly come up with better. If "better" is good enough to stand up in court, RIAA could sue non-compliant companies into poverty with

    many many one-pirate/one-manufacturer lawsuits filed in different venues simultaneously,

    injunctions against manufacturing more non-SDMI devices until it can be determined whether they are illegal, or

    lawsuits filed with a purchased judge.

    Again, I realize that my specific example would not stand up in court; it's just a thought in the appropriate direction for effect and example.

    Let me know if you see some huge hole in this that simply can't be argued around, no matter how many lawyers you have.

    --jurph

  • Why not write a sound blaster 16 "driver" that, instead of actually sending data to a sb16, writes it to c:\haha_fuck_you_riaa.wav?
  • I think a closer examination of the situation will help explain the situation.

    The basic principle of modern citizenship is individual sovereign rights with one of the outcomes is that every person's house is considered their castle. Within one's house, you can do whatever you wish. Effectively if you are sold a piece of music, within your private sphere (let's call it the domosphere in the style of ESR's noosphere + domos=house) you can copy, listen, mangle, whatever the music to your heart's content.

    However, once you step outside your door, those rights are subsumed within the wider community (nomosphere? nomos=natural laws or laws made by government). Here you are govered by the laws made by politicians (from polis=political community or state), one of which is the public broadcasting and recording act (or whatever the US equivalent is). This creates certain economic incentives such as the (non)exclusive right to play music over the airwaves which has given rise to such wonderful business models such as radio stations, TV sitcoms and the wonderful world of advertising (ain't Western technology wonderful :-} ).

    Now the recording industry and its associated bodies can be said (loosely speaking) to be originally formed to protect these rights and provide fair return for the artistic creators as in those days it was expensive to create complex performances.

    The big big problem is that technology has inverted the economic incentives. For example, it is so easy (relatively speaking) to create your own music that copyright is effectively diluted. Storage and dissemination of information is so cheap that you can probably set up a virtual radio station through the internet and netcast your private playlist. This of course causes a few heads to start worrying about where their next paycheck will be coming from as people switch from one mechanism to another with zero loss in perception and effective demand (ie good music - though tastes may vary). Throughout history, vested interests have maintained profitable trade routes and enforced them through violent acts of war if necessary. Today's battles are being fought in the media box and courtroom with it's heavy cost of regulatory oversight and potential for exploitation of loopholes.

    This is an era of great change and slashdot readers and hackers are on the front-line. In a technology battle for the consumer market, the media and public forums are being used as active weapons to both influence (and is constrained) by the legal framework. Buying a technology product is not just "buying music" but making a choice as to what laws one wishes to respect. I see the challenge to the wider hacker community is to develop technology which is both practical and deployable in the context of the wider social domain and existing business environment.

    The solution is not obvious. Technoloy can be developed (patents, secure digital copying, etc) but technology (can we dare say a technology arms race is now underway between the companies?) can always be sidesteped which just illustrates the futility of unenforceable regulations. Consumers are very smart although they might not conciously realise the implicit rights embedded within the technology. DIVX is a good example as it tried to impose technology better suited for the public sphere (renting of music from a library) into the private household. Interesting technology but bad market research.

    As we say in Australia, all the gear but no idea.

    LL
  • What is going force any company to use SDMI over MP3? Creaction of MP3 files is still perfectly legal, and it's also legal to make players to support it. The RIAA can't sue people for not supporting their musical standard. Plus this isn't going to make a dent in piracy which is conducted all direct CD-R copies.
  • Okay, how many of you still listen to old analog recordings out there? Will how about this: Get a nice high end ADC (like 256khz 24 bits (i think MAXIM makes some along those lines)), and patch into the line out (or speaker) jack of the player, and oversample the hell out of it, then you should have a recording with a decently low (but still existant) level of loss, then with your handy dandy copy of cooledit pro produce i nice .WAV, burn it on a CD or .MP3 it and give it to all your friends.
    I'm not saying you should all go out and pirate everything in the galaxy, i'm only pointing out that even when you add all this jazzy encryption (now the extra processor power to do that all i assume will use batteries and cost money) and all else, in the end it has to become an analog signal at some point, and when it does, we can just use our old methods. Have they not though about this, or is their target market the masses of morons and kiddies who are not determined enough to wield a soldering iron in defense of their technological freedom?
    Oh well, just my thoughs on the issue...
  • This situation is not unlike open source in general. It not sufficient to complain about things; actions is required. Artists feel they need record companies to make a living, and consumers feel they need record companies to get good music. This is exactly like the software industry, where both programmers and consumers believe that a large company is required.

    If you want to kill these bastard record companies, you have to convince the artists that the big companies are not needed. As long as an artist needs a major record label to get on the radio, to get their music into stores, to launch a profitable tour, to sell t-shirts, etc., then the major labels are not going anywhere.

    With the internet, we have removed the technical limitations. Now it is time to remove the social ones:

    Don't buy music from big companies

    Don't listen to radio stations that play corporate-sponsored music

    Don't go to huge stadium concerts

    PAY, and send your money to the artist as directly as possible. Like, "hey, I just got a ripped copy your album off the internet. Loved it. Here's $10. Add me to your email list so I know when you are in town."

    We no longer need EMI and Ticketmaster and Tower Records. They are brick walls between the musicians and the audience. But whining about them does nothing. Unless you are willing to stop giving them money, nothing will change. And if that means listening to less U2 and more Pineal Ventana, well, so be it.

  • The point about the "Perfect Sound Forever" campaign is an interesting one. When CD's came out, it was the new thing. Digital music on easy-to-use media. Cool! Fortunately for me, my music collection was an extension to my dad's of about 4 albums and 10 cassettes so the cost of switching wasn't that bad.

    The music industry has pulled the wool over consumers' eyes more than most realize. CD's generally come in two formats available to the consumer. AAD and DDD. I can't remember what all the letters stand for (something like the first letter is recording, the second: remixing, and the third being the process by which it was applied to the media. How close did I get someone who knows?) The vast majority (read: about 99%) of music CD's are AAD which means recording and remixing was all analog while it was placed on CD digitally. Keep in mind ALL CD's have their media placed on them digitally - it is the nature of the CD! DDD, which is what they were advertising with that BS campaign is 100% digital from the time the musician strums or beats or sings it to the time it hits the CD's surface. This is where the CD quality we heard, and continue to be lied to about.

    AAD CD's are an improvement over cassettes, albums, and 8-tracks, but not nearly as much of an improvement as DDD. To offer an example, I bought a CD of Beethoven's 9th by the London Philharmonic that was DDD (and $9!!!) and it was so clear I could actually hear people in the audience coughing during the more quiet parts of the movements. How's that for clarity!?

    Until the music industry spends the money to offer me the quality and clarity found on DDD CD's, I do not pitty them one bit. I pitty the artists who spend the time to make the music and please us fans. They are the ones who ultimately get screwed by the industry in that their work (art, if you will) is not marketed in the high quality that CD's are capable of. Until I see DDD media churned out at a fair price like about $9 max, I say screw 'em all.

    The interesting thing here is that generally these people have no clue how to implement what they talk about. Like Liz Dole talking about filtering the Internet: Her thinking is basically "porn=bad; you can access it in public places; other than a convenience store, on the web; It is possible to rate sites and have browsers not show sites with certain ratings." What she diesn't know is that most sites do not have these ratings and without those ratings, they will be blocked by default if any security method is checked. So what comes next?

    Same thing with the music industry only they're more slippery. Their thinking is, "People don't know the difference between AAD and DDD, they will buy it even if it's only available on cassette, mp3s can be obtained free, that means less money for artists, which equals less money for us, gotta do something fast!" So they do something that will piss off a bunch of fans and say it is "protecting the artists' rights" when it is really only forcing people to do one of three things; protest inflated prices, find something new and improved (mp4?), or open up and hope they have an appetite for steaming dung because that's all they'll get. Maybe not even steaming dung. If the people will deal with it cold, why spend the time to warm it up!?

    I'll say this and then shut up on the matter. It all comes down to a lack of customer service. Executives, corporations, etc. could, for the most part, care less what would make the average consumer truly happy. All they are interested in are three simple questions: "Will they buy it?", "Will we make money off it?", and "How much can we make off it?"

  • It is amazing... (Score:4)

    by Jeckle ( 30833 ) on Tuesday June 29, 1999 @05:30AM (#1827030) Homepage
    Perhaps it's just my being a lazy-ass and not thoroughly researching this topic from the artists being "protected", or it could just be that I really don't give a care about wasting my time to do the above, but it seems that I do not hear the actual ARTISTS complaining too much about mp3's and free music in general. Public Enemy embraces the technology, the Beastie Boys released a mix of a pretty good tune (the mix sucked IMHO) that wans't mp3, but was free. They plan to release more songs in the future last I heard.

    I understand RIAA wanting to protect mp3s from reproduction, but then again, where were these great guardians of artists' frail rights when people were dubbing to cassette tapes oh so long ago!? I mean, high speed dubbing was a pretty standard feature on tape decks, and still is! I really don't think they made those so we could make copies of college lectures and recorded interviews. It was made so I could quickly copy my buddy's Bon Jovi "Slippery When Wet" tape in less than an hour.

    Funny how when RIAA got pissed off at the Lyrics Database, I never read about a lot of artists getting in on the procedings. Look at that site now. I hate to say it, but it sucks. I used to love that site, but don't go there any longer simply due to the fact that the International Lyrics Server serves up the lyrics to absolutely no songs I have ever heard of. Thanks a lot corporate world, I appreciate that.

    I think the RIAA thinks it has a good purpose, sort of like how most political extremists think they are right and everyone else is wrong. It would seem to me that artists would not mind mp3s. The more people who listen to their music, the more people will want to see them in concert. They make their living either way. I would really like to see some tool like Pinfeld or some other MTV VJ ask a question like "How do you feel about people ripping your music to mp3s and giving them out to their friends?" instead of "So, how cool was that last tour?" next time he had a really big super star to ask questions and kiss up to. At least then we would know how the artists (remember? the ones being "exploited" by mp3s?) feel about this whole matter.

    One last thing, RIAA does all of this to jump on mp3s and yet I never hear their response to peoples' gripes over incrediblly bloated CD prices. If people could actually get a fair price on a CD, perhaps mp3s would not be quite as popular. The main reason I got into these things is because I could get them for free off ftp sites and did not have to pay Blockbuster their outrageous prices for something like "Poison's Greatest Hits" which probably contains all of about 6 songs, 3 of which I never heard of. When an EP costs $13 or so, we all ought to just bring our own KY when going to Blockbuster or Sam Goody or any of the other commercial rapists out there (not their fault, it's the music industry. But, they are the tools by which the rape is perpetrated).

    Remember when Pearl Jam got so pissed at Ticketmaster? They blabbed about it wherever they could and rightfully so. But, I have not heard ol' Eddy Vedder whailing about how more people probably own a ripped version of "Vitalogy" than have actually bought the damn CD.

    Just my opinion... etc.
  • Consumers aren't stupid, but they can be duped rather easily. I think all the phase I, phase II stuff is a simple lure 'em in and bash 'em on the head. In phase I everything works fine, you can listen to all your MP3s or whatever on your handy $100 player you just bought ('cause it could play mp3). Then phase II hits (and I think "hit" is right, since it will most likely be a date), an embedded hardware change takes effect, and no more even slightly unpure music gets through. Then you have the player, have to buy music for it, and they win.

  • Re:CD-R (Score:1)

    by Wah ( 30840 )
    I agree. The thing about it is, even the "widespread commercial successes" are being as blatantly screwed over by record companies as the consumer. Anybody watch VH1's "Behind the Music", probably 75% of the artists lived like kings while they were hot, but quickly realized (after their songs were off the chart) that they DIDN'T OWN A THING. Even thier own effort.

    Help to educate consumers. Digital reproduction should be the downfall of anyone who tries to monopolize content. It doesn't cost anything to make, why should I pay anything for it? Paying 15$ for a music cd is almost as ridiculous as 1000$ for a server OS. (Both of which have similar prodcution value, although one has a lot more R&D behind it) It is our duty to fight unjust laws and unjust business practices, if you think a company is abusing you, go guerilla.

    SDMI=DIVX=SHIT
  • I think musicians should be paid for performances, with less emphasis on CD sales. If things continue the way they are, this is what will happen.

    I totally agree with this. Music is a momentary art. Sure you can record it, but something is always lost in the translation, or mussed up, or faked. To be apprectiated as art (from an artist;) it should be seen/heard live. It's like taking a picture of a painting, is that worth the price of the original?

    This would seem to be the artist's decision, not yours.

    No, the artist doesn't decide how I experience the art. He (all-inclusive, not sexist) merely creates, you enjoy. "Entitled to be compensated"?!, for what? magnetic images!? is music so difficult to create and scarce that I must cherish each and every moment...and PAY for it?!

    I would pay for music, but only great music and even then only to hear it live. Otherwise I would cover the costs of production, but most definitely NOT the price of promotion (the RIAA's excuse for $15 cds). Sorry I guess being a Phish phan has colored me against paying for absolute crap (and helped me to appreciate the nuances of LIVE artistry)
  • Wanna bet? If I produce a song, and I decide that I'm not going to do any live performances, it's pretty much my decision, isn't it. You have no asy in the matter.

    Yea, if you want to control(limit) distribution of it. I also noticed you said "produce" which leads to the term producer, in this sense record producer, or perhaps a product. I'm talking about art in the higher sense. If you have a product then you want to make it scarce, hence more valuable. Digital reproduction of sound makes scarcity irrelevant, and in the same repect makes the value of said reproduction move to zero. Not totally b/c there is still "enjoyment" value for me, which will be compensated.

    I find it odd that something can be so profound, yet deemed so worthless.

    What, like free software?;) Worthless in a purely physical sense. Not, as it were, a meta-physical sense(the enjoyment value). I only think that said value is worth monetary exchange in the extremes,i.e. I REALLY like the music. Otherwise money gains the ability to purchase happiness, which it can't.

    what's the artist going to live on, their good looks?

    Nope, thier ability to play for people, live. I refuse to, as another poster put-it, "buy yachts for V.P.s" while artists are used and tossed away. They will gain power and stability much like hard-core open source coders do, through the cult of personality that follows them, and just being damn good at what they do.
  • SDMI will fail. It could be said that it has already failed. On a basic level the technology just doesn't make any sense.

    I don't care how well you encrypt the music, or what copy protection scheme you whip up. If the end result is music coming through my sound card, then I can duplicate it on a digital level. Someone will whip up a basic SDMI-copying utility in no time, and if they don't I will.

    The RIAA isn't scared of piracy, nor are they trying to protect artists' rights. If they were scared of piracy then they'd be fighting casette tapes and CDRs. The RIAA is scared of a One-To-Many distribution mechanism, which is the only real service they provide. With digital music and the internet, we're all a One-To-Many distribution mechanism, and it suddenly doesn't make sense to sell your soul to them for something anyone can do in their living room.

    Did you know that of the $15 or $16 you spend on a CD in most CD stores, about $1 of that actually goes to the artist? I have no problem paying for music (free speech not beer), especially if I'm paying the artist and not financing some VP's new yacht. Details aside, an artist (say, Public Enemy) could distribute their own music over the net, charge $2-$5 for the album, thereby getting 2-5 times what they would have from the RIAA per album. I'd be happy to send an artist I like a few bucks for their new album. It's a win-win situation for everyone but the RIAA.

    The RIAA (and all middle-men, for that matter) are becoming obsolete, and they're just starting to realize it.

    Bye! We don't need you any more.

    Anthony DiMarco
  • Didn't they learn from software in the 80's that copy protection doesn't work?

    It is, in fact, impossible to devise a copy protection scheme that can't be cracked if all the components are under the complete control of the cracker.

    In effect, all this will likely do is screw the honest person. The pirates will be able to copy freely. Those of us who can deal with downloading cracks produced by others, yet still want to remain legal, will be only inconvienienced.
  • Rip the CD to an audio file on your computer, then play it back and record off the digital output of your sound card. This will kill any SCMS bits in the stream.

    The nice thing about general purpose computers is they should always be immune to all this copy management garbage.

  • what copy protection is that? I haven't seen it. All the discs I've wanted to copy have been no problem with CDRWin
  • A quick peek at my CD library shows that the copyrights on all REM's older albums (on IRS Records) are owned by the label... the band only owns the copyright on the Warner albums.

    Copyright ownership seems to depend on the individual artists' contracts. Depending on your star status (or lack thereof) and the benevolence of your label (or lack thereof) you may find yourself without any rights at all to your own work...

    Just another example of how you, too, can be Screwed By The Man! [tm] :)
    --

  • The RIAA claims that their value lies in marketing and distribution. With the distribution problem solved, that leaves only marketing. And personally, the best kind of marketing is to just listen to the damn music directly. I don't *want* RIAA marketing. I can (and will) find my own music thankyou very much!
  • Have to say, as a musician, I agree. I'd rather people heard my music. You can always make money from gigs. Of course, that would mean that the money factor in the music biz becomes less important... you can barely live on gigging money... but that's okay I think, because it means more *true* musicians and fewer music industry yes men. The music is important. The money is not.
  • The talentless suits of the world are ensuring their financial survival by monopolizing creativity. It has been this way for eons.

    From reports I've read, artists get about $1.00 per CD sold and it costs roughly 17 to print and package a CD. So, subtract $1.17 from the average $17.00 cost of a good CD and where does all that money go? Into the pockets of money-grubbing suits.

    These lame asses couldn't play a chord or sing a note if their worthless lives depended on it and they reap the most benefit from the talent of others.

    They will be quick to say that if it weren't for their business savvy that the music industry would never have become what it is. To a degree, this is probably true.

    ENTER: The Internet

    The Internet has obsolesced these monkeys by giving artists a direct outlet for their music. Sites like MP3.COM would fall over themselves trying to help any willing artist bring their songs to market this way, so the technological aspect is covered.

    The billing model would be something of a leap of faith. I personally believe if they marketed downloadable songs at say 50 per MP3 file, people would pay it. Since any encryption scheme _WILL_ be cracked eventually and people have been pirating music since dual cassette decks were widely available, there really isn't much of a risk.

    Make the price so reasonable that any self-respecting person will pay it. The artists stand to make more this way since they don't have a money grubbing businessman between them and their fans. Metallica doesn't need to know how to encode, upload and distribute MP3s for this to be successful. The boys over at MP3.COM and sites like it will gladly do the work for them and charge a very modest fee compared to the current gouging of the record industry.

    The only people that stand to lose out are the talentless businessmen, hence their massive canipcion fit.

    Must suck not having any true worth in life, eh RIAA?

    Fucking assholes.



    Talisman

  • cat /dev/cdrom > cd.img
    gzip cd.img

    (send cd.img.gz wherever)

    gunzip cd.img.gz
    cdwrite cd.img /dev/cdwriter

    (Ok, so I pulled the last command out
    of /dev/random, but you get the idea.)

    It doesn't matter if the CD is encrypted, because with this technique you don't have to decrypt to copy, and since you're making an exact duplicate then if the CD Drive could read the original it can read the copy.

  • 1. Cut the grill open with a Dremel.
    2. With an X-Acto knife, cut the cone away from the surround.
    3. Carefully cut the coil away from the cone.
    4. Carefully unwind the coil.
    5. Cut the winding in half.
    6. With a lighter, burn away the laquer insulation from the ends.
    7. Do the same with other speaker and patch in!

    RIAA - Kiss my ass!

  • 60 Hz hum, who knows what else...

    Nice idea - would be easy to implement, but may suffer from other problems. Doing what I suggested would resolve these issues - though you have to be very careful...
  • I fail to see the point, all of these schemes get cracked in no time. SCMS, Macrovision, PSX and Saturn country code lock-outs and copy protection regimes, even hardware lockouts, et. al., have all been defeated. Any chimp with even a modicum of technical knowledge can circumnavigate these truly pathetic measures. East Asian "pirates" in Taiwan and Hong Kong usually have new regimes cracked well before they even hit the marketplace, if you can believe that. I can't imagine this new scheme is going to be any different. There will inevitably be ways around it, and the workarounds are going to be legion. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

    I have to wonder though, if this isn't some giant conspiracy on the part of the labels and the guys who make clarifiers, SCMS strippers, modchips and the like, just to sell more hardware, because that's what the end result is going to be. Sad little schemes like this aren't going to stop any determined bootlegger.

    You're all right, the price of big label CDs is outlandish. I've never seen singles as high as the $17 quoted in this thread, but $13 is not uncommon. I still remember when the industry swore up and down when the CD format debuted that prices would quickly sink below those of cassette tapes (which were $10 or less), due to cheaper manufacturing processes. Well, it never happened. They all lied, you have a right to be pissed.

    Don't bitch and moan about it though, it's not going to change anything. Do something. Buy indie! There are hundreds of small independent labels out there, most of whom only charge $10 or so for their CDs (some, like Dischord, charge even less). The bands are usually better anyway. Moreover, a greater share of the money actually goes to the band. Hell, I'd guess well over 80% of what I buy is indie. Call for catalogs, search the net, whatever, the stuff is out there. Don't take crap from the big labels if you don't want to.

    Oh yeah, one more thing. Boycott V2 Music. Those bastards have set the SCMS setting on some of their recent releases to ZERO (final)!!! You can't even make a LEGAL digital copy of your CD, that you bought and paid for, to your format of choice (MiniDisc, etc.). Lame as hell, and they deserve to pay for it. If you see something by that label, shun it. If you want, write the company if you want and ball them out. The address is information@v2music.com.

    That's all, have a good day.
  • Unfortunately, many people don't even have optical/digital line-outs on their soundcards. Very few models have them to this day, and almost no OEMs ship computers with these high end soundcards. You'd have to go out and buy a Xitel Storm Platinum ($80), or a SB Live! (Not Value - about $130) or something similarily pricey, just to do this, and you shouldn't even have to. US Copyright law dictates that all consumers have the right to make one backup of their purchased media for archival purposes. Just who is V2 that they think they are exempt from this? They're just running roughshod over established norms, and I'm not pleased.

    Sure, I run it through the PC, or I could make an analog copy, or I could use a stripper, or any number of ways around it, but the point is I shouldn't have to. Moreover, they should've advertised their little decision, and they did not. I didn't get up in arms about SCMS because I could still make the one copy, which was all I needed, so it was fine. But this is clearly an abuse of the system, and I can see no point to their decision other than to inconvenience and antagonize end users. As a result, I believe they should be made to feel some pain.
  • >>I fail to see the point, all of these schemes get cracked in no time. SCMS, Macrovision, PSX and Saturn country code lock-outs and copy protection regimes, even hardware lockouts, et. al., have all been defeated.

    >It doesn't matter. You can't buy devices that do this in the consumer electronics store in the mall. So it doesn't exist. Just because a handful of high-tech wunderkinds have the ability to crack this stuff doesn't mean it will ever find its way into the hands of the general public -- which is the only time it actually matters.

    Whatever, Cletus. The number of technically inept idiots with modchips in their PSXs could easily be considered legion. If you'd bother to do a little research by doing a quick search on AltaVista or reading r.g.v.sony, you'd know this. These people can't disassemble a system or solder at all, yet they're playing "backups". Care to guess how? And this is just one example. I could also easily point out the thousands of everyday folk with $30 settop video clarifiers sitting between their VCRs or DVDs and VCRs. It's pretty obvious that anit-piracy countermeasures have long since reached critcal mass. Just because you're too dumb to see it doesn't mean it's not happening.

    >>Any chimp with even a modicum of technical knowledge can circumnavigate these truly pathetic measures.

    >You're on crack. This means that you and your friends, members of the technological priesthood all, will be able to pirate music. That's all well and good for you. But it does not mean that any lasting change will have been effected in the way the music industry operates. It does not mean that the artists will stop getting screwed the way they are today.

    And you're a moron. Did I ever say I was going to pirate music, simian? Of course not. But being the High Exhalted Troll you are, you simply assumed as much. Doubtless because you're an ass.
    I spend a ton of money on music, but I do this because I like small label stuff, and I know the band is actually getting a fair cut (and they need it when they'll be lucky to break 50,000 copies sold worldwide). Why am I even bothering to respond to you? You're obviously an imbecile. Did you find it convenient to only read the first part of my post and skip the rest? I never said anything about artists rights, ignoramus. I'm all for that. I merely said RIAA can bring about this standard if they want, but it's going to be a failure because there will be easy ways to crack it (for people who's brainstems are attached to their spinal columns, unlike yourself), and besides, there is little incentive for smaller labels to adhere to the standard.

    Scurry back under your bridge now, little troll.
  • I know that Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) owns the Nothing label which he releases his/NIN's albums under. (Marilyn Manson and some other artists are on the label too)

    However, I don't know enough to say whether this is an example of an artist owning the copyright for his/her/their own music, or if Nothing is just an intermediary and the label (and thus his music) is really owned by a larger label.

    Anyone know anything about this?
  • Nahhh .. the tax on CD-R have yet to go. But knowing our goverment .. it wont be long before they try it.
  • Keep in mind that only devices that adhere to the SDMI specs will be affected. Now, if you were a manufacturer, what incentive would you have to follow this if it only means a smaller selection of music that your customers can listen to? SCMS could always be circumvented by using studio-level gear rather than consumer gear. Back then, it wasn't a particularly big deal for the hardware vendors to add it, since digital recording wasn't as widespread as it is today. With the RIAAs recent battles in court, can we really expect to see this new SDMI appearing in more devices, or heaven forbid, software? (Picture: MSMP3 '99 - scary)

    Daniel
    -
    Editor - Dualism.org
    President - Ophelan.com
  • This might seem like heresy, but I'd like
    to advocate piracy. 99%
    of the artists in the world just want their
    music listened to and enjoyed. None of the
    musicians I know (some who are quite accomplished
    professionally) would care if you copied their
    CDs and gave them to other people to listen to.

    The only artists the RIAA will help are the
    tiny fraction who have widespread commercial
    success. This is so blatantly obvious I can't
    believe that industry or govt is being sucked
    into their con.

    So please make a musician happy. Share their music with the world.
  • I totally agree with you that for many artists, the solution of giving away mp3 for free is just fine. But this is not the case for all artists.
    Public Enemy makes (AFAIK) most of its money by touring. Giving away free music for them is just a great way of getting more popular. If you generalize the distribution of unprotected (free) mp3 music, this will force ALL artists to embrace this business model. For most of them, this will be desastrous (in particular for classical music or jazz). What the SDMI group is trying to do is to define a framework that would allow artists to choose the policy they like, similar to existing software policies (e.g.: free, "shareware", commercial).
  • I'd be happy to mangle, modify, and otherwise mutilate my stereo. In fact, I already have. I prolly have a high ranking on the bastardization scale of stereos. :)
    Someone will just sell replacement speakers or a second pass-through decoder for recording anyway, so who cares? Sony can go to hell then eh? I don't think their equipment is all that damned good anyway, but that's just me. :)
  • OK, here's the poop - points for getting it right: The first letter indicates how the audio was first laid to tape; if a digital recorder (linear digital tape, helical-head DAT/ADAT/8mm format du jour, or hard disk) is used then the recording warrants that first "D". The second letter indicates whether the multitrack was mixed to analog or digital media. The third letter is a "marketing character", it's always "D" on a CD because a CD is a digital storage medium. I do, however, take issue with the assertion that "DDD" disks are always the best and "AAD" disks are some kind of second-rate ripoff. This would be a good time to get coffee...

    Digital encoding processes have improved /immensely/ since the early days of digital recording - they are, however, no more perfect than analog processes. Each method has its strengths and weaknesses. In the initial recording phase, the great strength of digital is that it introduces no analog tape noise (hiss) and, since the playback process involves a buffered data stream clocked to a crystal, there are no "wow" and "flutter" anomolies related to variations in the tape speed caused by the mechanical tape path. This is of course the great strength of digital throughout the process as regards final sound quality ; the absence of generation loss, i.e., "perfect digital copies 'cuz it's all just numbers" is the other tremendous advantage, along with the opportunities for advanced editing and manipulation in the digital realm. The great weakness of digital sound, however, lies in the conversion process. 16 bit/44.1k is just barely within the theoretical limits of the minimum required for accurate reproduction. In order to squeeze music through this 44.1k "pipe" without aliasing artifacts, an audio source must be sharply and ruthlessly filtered so as to disallow any signal above 22.05khz. You audio electronics folks out there know that, generally speaking, filtering = capacitors = variable delay and phase shift = a messed-up signal. The advantage of analog tape(as seen by some very well-respected recording engineers) is that it doesn't require pre-filtering, and the way the signal is laid on a field of ferric dust results in some very nice-sounding intermodulation that can sound more "cohesive", as if the music were subtly blending into something tastier than the sum of its parts. Think of stew, or spaghetti sauce.

    Both formats suffer a bit while recording low level, i.e., quiet, sections of music. This comes out most in classical and jazz, as you might imagine. But digital suffers worse in the recording process, when compared to professional analog recorders and tapes that don't introduce noise to anything like the degree that your home cassette deck does. If the loudest point in a recording uses all available 16 bits of precision, then the quiet sections won't "fill up" the recorder, and must be rendered with less precision just when you need as much as you can get.

    In the mixing arena, the problem lies in a lack of precision in the way the middle "D" is applied. There are digital and analog mixing boards, and digital and analog sound processors and effects (yes, I know your bitchin new reverb is "digital", but I'm talking about devices that take a digital input and output a processed digital signal back into your digital mixing console) and there are pluses and minuses to each type of device as well as differences in taste, but the second "D" doesn't indicate that the music signal was processed entirely in the digital realm; it is more likely, in fact, that the digital multitrack was played back, the signal on each track was converted to analog to run through that vintage British console where it could be routed to a variety of sound-processing devices (each of which converted part of the signal to digital again for processing, then back to analog), then the whole thing was converted and filtered again before being stored on some kind of 2 track digital device. None of this is necessarily bad (the a/d d/a conversions can't help though); my point is that the process is often very different from the "simple, squeaky-clean all digital" aura that the recording industry would like DDD recordings to be surrounded with...

    Anyway, blah blah blah... The point I'm trying to make is that while it's pretty clear that CDs are superior to cassettes in pretty much every way as a distribution medium (although far from perfect, and far from what is possible today were we not entrenched in the CD standard), the use of digital recording techniques does not necessarily make a superior recording. There are advantages and disadvantages to both, and making buying decisions based on the number of "D"s is no more a guarantee of getting a superior recording than only buying albums by artists who use Gibson guitars.

    Signature? I don't have to show you no steenking signature!
  • Unless the record companies stop releasing stuff on CD, I can't imagine how they are going to stem the tide of n-generation cloning

    The plan is simple (if sub-moronic): encrypt CDs. According to this [yahoo.com] article, the SDMA also plans on creating a new CD Audio spec that's encrypted. They admit that current CD players will need to be upgraded, but neglect to mention the multiple billions of dollars that that would cost. Or the fact that there is zero incentive for anybody to do so. But hey, I'll be willing to spend $200 just to make Sony happy and make my life more difficult. Right.
  • If SDMI is the only way to get the newest release by someone, and most importantly the players are easy to use, it will succeed.

    It's going to be many many years before electronic distribution completely takes over to the point where CDs are no longer sold. Until that point, anyone with the CD-ROM drive and a computer can make an MP3 of the same songs that are distributed in whatever format SDMI proposes. This is the reason SDMI will fail. They are charging money for a song when you can get it (illegally) for free over the internet. Unless they charge a very small fee per song (highly unlikely coming from the RIAA), economics dictate that people will go with the the cheaper MP3 format. They are proposing a standard with a large number of disadvantages over the MP3 format and only one advantage: ease of appropriation for the end user. But unless the RIAA releases thousands of songs in this new format, it's going to take just as long to search for a song that might be in this format as it is to look on scour.net for the free version.
  • If SDMI is the only way to get the newest release by someone, and most importantly the players are easy to use, it will succeed.

    It's going to be many many years before electronic distribution completely takes over to the point where CDs are no longer sold. Until that point, anyone with the CD-ROM drive and a computer can make an MP3 of the same songs that are distributed in whatever format SDMI proposes. This is the reason SDMI will fail. They are charging money for a song when you can get it (illegally) for free over the internet. Unless they charge a very small fee per song (highly unlikely coming from the RIAA), economics dictate that people will go with the the cheaper MP3 format. They are proposing a standard with a large number of disadvantages over the MP3 format and only one advantage: ease of appropriation for the end user. But unless the RIAA releases thousands of songs in this new format, it's going to take just as long to search for a song that might be in this format as it is to look on scour.net for the MP3 version, and just as likely that it won't be available. Until they can ensure that every song I want will be available in this format, I might was well waste my time looking on hotline for a song that I want instead of wasting my time looking on the RIAA's website for a song that they don't have available. And at that point, there really aren't any advantages of the SDMI's format over MP3s -- only disadvantages.
  • I don't think it was MTV (they are pretty yuppy), but some reporter asked Eddie Vedder on the day that their album "Yield" was released, how he felt knowing that a lot of people already had the entire CD in MP3 format before the album was even released.

    He just said "more power to 'em".

    didn't sound too disgruntled to me.

  • I have to agree.

    Speaking as a music lover living in the UK - where CDs cost about £16 (about US$25) - I have little or no sympathy for the RIAA. They conned us into duplicating our music collections on a new format at great expense (and does anyone remember the 'Perfect Sound Forever' advertising claims in the early days of CD? - we should be suing).
  • ... But eventually economics will catch up with
    them and they will have to find a clue.

    My guessis that a clue can be found if one starts looking
    for something resembling a cache-server in a low
    cost-per-unit, high-choice, high-bandwidth envirnoment.

    The first problem with this "clue"
    is that it represents a new distribution channel which will meet fierce resistance by rich
    conservatives with huge vested interests in curren
    channels.

    The second problem is that these channels will continue to proliferate anyway, and
    if the music industry is not inside this process,
    they will not get much cash from it either, which
    at some point will be unacceptable for investors,
    so the conservatives will be forced out of office.
    It will be bloody, but it will happen.

    This latest shenanegan concerning cryptographically signed
    formats is simply a non-starter. It is
    just another attempt to throw good money after
    an outdated distribution channel. Their loss, not ours.

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